Under the leadership of their rapporteur, Christofer Fjellner (EPP, Sweden), the negotiators of the European Parliament on the planned modernisation of the trade defence instruments (TDI) of the EU submitted a package deal to the Estonian Presidency of the Council at a trialogue negotiating session on Wednesday 18 October, containing proposals on the three key points of the text: the lesser duty rule, the pre-disclosure of anti-dumping and anti-subsidy investigations and the reimbursement of duty paid in the course of re-investigations concerning the expiry of duty, several sources close to the dossier in Parliament reported on Thursday 19 October.
“The MEPs' proposals move a step towards the Council, whilst preserving the high level of ambition expressed by Parliament in its position of April 2014”, one source told us.
The Estonian Presidency put the MEPs' proposal to the member states on Thursday. The next trialogue session at political level will be held on 7 November and further sessions at technical level are scheduled for 27 October and possibly also 6 November.
“The Council needs to move or make a counter proposal”, another source told us, stressing that Parliament had “considerable leverage” to move the dossier on ahead of Parliament's approval vote on the new EU anti-dumping calculation methodology (see EUROPE 11875).
However, the matter is by no means settled, as the Council has “many misgivings and little ambition” and “many member states are no longer desperately keen on the TDI update”, a source told us.
The pro-free trade member states - Sweden, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands - are still opposed to the plan and others, such as Germany, are happy enough with the status quo, our source went on to explain.
The planned update of the TDI, tabled by the Commission in 2013, remained at deadlock at the Council until a fragile agreement was reached by qualified majority under the Slovak Presidency at the end of 2016 (see EUROPE 11688). Parliament agreed on its approach in April 2014 (see EUROPE 11063). (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)